Legs pumping. Lungs burning. A corridor of carved stone and flickering emergency lights, and none of it made sense.
Thirty seconds ago, Nolan Calloway had been dead. He was sure of that. The memory clung to the edges of his mind like a fading photograph — the screech of tires, the impossible rotation of the world through a shattered windshield, then nothing. Flat, absolute nothing.
Now he was running.
Alliance-issue boots hammered against Prothean stonework. His arms pumped in rhythm, encased in blue hardsuit plating he'd never worn before. A pistol bounced at his hip. Dog tags clinked against his chest — someone else's name stamped into the metal.
"Marcus Webb. Lieutenant. Service Number 4471-Alpha-Kilo."
The memories hit in waves. Not his memories. Webb's. Demotion. A batarian slaver interdiction gone political. Forty-three civilians saved and a career destroyed for it. Reassigned to Eden Prime, March 2180, as punishment detail guarding a Prothean dig site nobody cared about.
Except Nolan cared. Because Nolan Calloway — twenty-eight, software engineer, dead in a car accident on Interstate 90 — had played Mass Effect. All three games. Twice.
And Eden Prime was where everything started.
"Webb! Keep up!"
Lieutenant Chen's voice cracked through the corridor ahead. A compact woman with a scar bisecting her left eyebrow, moving fast with her rifle sweeping corners. Behind Nolan, Corporal Vega — no relation to James, too old, too thin — wheezed through labored breaths.
"Dr. Yusuf activated the beacon," Chen snapped over her shoulder. "Whole site's lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree. We get to the chamber, we secure him, we extract. Questions later."
"Beacon. Prothean beacon. Three years before Shepard touches one on this same planet."
The thought landed like a brick. 2180. Three years before the events of Mass Effect 1. Three years before Sovereign attacked the Citadel. Six years before the Reapers burned Earth.
He stumbled. Webb's body caught itself — muscle memory overriding the stranger now wearing it — and kept running.
The chamber opened ahead of them. Massive. Cathedral-scale, carved by hands that had been dust for fifty thousand years. Dr. Yusuf stood at the center, arms raised, face slack with ecstasy that had nothing to do with religion. The Prothean beacon — a columnar structure of dark metal and green light — pulsed like a heartbeat.
"Yusuf!" Chen's rifle came up. "Step away from—"
The beacon detonated.
Not physically. The structure didn't move. But green light erupted outward in a wave that passed through stone and armor and bone like they were smoke. Nolan's vision whited out. He was falling, then floating, then neither.
Images burned through his skull. Worlds on fire. Civilizations screaming as metal gods descended from dark space. Species he couldn't name harvested like wheat, their technology stripped, their biology repurposed. Cycle after cycle after cycle. Fifty thousand years between each, and each one ended the same way.
Then something different. A voice — not sound, but intention, pressed directly into his neurons.
ANOMALOUS CONSCIOUSNESS DETECTED. ORIGIN: EXTERNAL TO CYCLE PARAMETERS.
CYCLE BREAKER PROTOCOL: ELIGIBLE.
BINDING INITIATED.
The pain was extraordinary. Like someone had driven a railroad spike through his left temple and was using it to pry his skull apart from the inside. He was on his knees. Blood dripped from his nose onto the ancient floor.
A translucent display flickered to life in front of his eyes. Not a hologram anyone else could see — something projected directly onto his visual cortex, like a heads-up display stitched into his brain.
[SOVEREIGN MANDATE SYSTEM — ONLINE]
[SYSTEM LEVEL: 1]
[MANDATE POINTS: 50/100]
[BINDING PROGRESS: 1%. FULL INTEGRATION: 72 HOURS]
[PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: BREAK THE CYCLE]
The display was clean, simple. Blue text on a transparent background with tabs running along his peripheral vision — Territory, Construction, Heroes, War Council, Resources. Like a strategy game interface overlaid onto reality. Every tab pulsed gently, waiting to be opened.
"A system. I got a system. Like every isekai power fantasy I ever read, except the galaxy gets eaten in six years if I screw this up."
"Webb! Webb, respond!"
Chen was over him. Her hand slapped his cheek. Hard.
"I'm—" His voice came out wrong. Too deep. Webb's vocal cords, not his. He swallowed blood from the nosebleed. "I'm here. The beacon, it—"
The lights died.
Every emergency lamp in the chamber cut out simultaneously. The beacon's green glow dimmed to nothing. For three seconds, darkness swallowed everything.
Then the shooting started.
A flashlight beam stabbed through the far entrance. Metallic shapes — humanoid but wrong, moving with a mechanical precision that made Nolan's skin crawl. Single photoreceptor eyes blazed white in the dark.
Geth.
"Geth. Here. In 2180. Three years early."
Chen opened fire. Vega dropped behind a stone column and added his rifle to the chorus. The Geth returned fire — mass accelerator rounds chewing into ancient stonework with a sound like tearing fabric.
"Main corridor's blocked!" Vega shouted. "They came through the excavation tunnel!"
Nolan pressed his back against a pillar. His pistol was in his hand — he didn't remember drawing it. The System display still floated in his vision, calm and patient while the world disintegrated around him.
A new notification pulsed:
[EMERGENCY CONSTRUCTION PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
[AVAILABLE: DEFENSIVE TURRET — MASS ACCELERATOR, MARK I]
[COST: 50 MANDATE POINTS]
[CURRENT MP: 50/100]
[DEPLOY? Y/N]
Fifty points. Everything he had. He didn't know what Mandate Points were, how they regenerated, or what he'd need them for later. He didn't know anything about this system except that it existed and it was asking him a question while bullets tore the air above his head.
Chen took a hit. Her barrier flared blue and held, but she stumbled, cursing.
"Yes. Deploy. Whatever that means, yes."
He focused on the confirmation. Thought it. Willed it.
His right hand moved on its own. Not a seizure — deliberate, precise motion, like puppet strings pulling from the wrist. His palm flattened toward the ground in front of the column. Heat bloomed in his forearm. The air shimmered.
Metal appeared.
A base plate materialized first. Titanium alloy, matte grey, bolting itself to the stone floor with anchors that punched through fifty-thousand-year-old rock like it was clay. A swivel mount assembled on top of it — servos, gears, a targeting gimbal. Then the barrel. Mass accelerator coils wrapping around a central rail, coolant lines threading through the housing, a thermal clip magazine slotting into place with a mechanical click.
Three seconds. The whole thing took three seconds.
[CONSTRUCTION COMPLETE: DEFENSIVE TURRET — MARK I]
[MANDATE POINTS: 0/100]
[TURRET STATUS: ONLINE — AUTO-TARGETING HOSTILE SIGNATURES]
The turret's sensor pod swiveled, locked onto the nearest Geth platform, and fired.
Two rounds. Center mass. The Geth jerked backward, its chest cavity punched through by hypervelocity slugs, and collapsed in a shower of white synthetic fluid.
The remaining Geth platforms reassessed. Their flashlight heads turned toward the turret, processed its existence, and did what Geth do — they adapted. Two retreated toward the excavation tunnel. A third took a flanking angle and fired at the turret's base.
"Cover!" Chen screamed. Her rifle barked three times. The flanking Geth lost its head.
The turret tracked the retreating platforms and put rounds into the tunnel entrance until rock dust filled the air and nothing moved.
Silence. The kind that rings.
"Webb."
Chen's voice. Low. Controlled. Dangerous.
"What the hell did you just do?"
Nolan stared at the turret. It hummed softly, sensor pod still scanning. A real, physical object that hadn't existed ten seconds ago. Built from nothing. By him. With a thought.
His hands were shaking. Both of them. Violent, uncontrollable tremors that made the pistol rattle against his thigh. He tried to holster it. Missed the holster twice. Shoved it into his belt instead.
"I don't—" He coughed. Tasted copper. "The beacon. Something happened when the beacon—"
The migraine hit like a freight train. His vision doubled. The System display stuttered, glitched, steadied. His stomach heaved and he barely got his head turned before he vomited against the dig site wall — bile and blood and whatever Webb had eaten for breakfast.
Chen was already on comms, calling for medevac, her voice tight with professional urgency that didn't mask the fear underneath. Vega was checking Dr. Yusuf, who lay crumpled beneath the dead beacon, unconscious and bleeding from both ears.
The turret kept scanning. Patient. Mechanical. Impossible.
[BINDING PROGRESS: 3%]
[WARNING: NEURAL INTEGRATION STRESS DETECTED. REST RECOMMENDED.]
[NOTE: ALLIANCE INTELLIGENCE SIGNAL DETECTED — INBOUND. ETA: 4 HOURS.]
Nolan wiped his mouth with a shaking hand. The dog tags clinked against his chest.
"Marcus Webb. That's who I am now."
Four hours until Alliance Intelligence arrived. Four hours to figure out a lie that could explain a turret appearing from thin air.
He pressed his forehead against the cold stone wall and tried to breathe.
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